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Spiritual Healing
Ayahuasca, Vine of Death
Could a Peruvian ayahuasca ceremony conjure my brother’s spirit after his suicide at 26?
Following my brother’s death by suicide, I said yes to drinking a bright purple psychedelic brew that caused me to experience my own death.
Raised as a Catholic, though decidedly non-religious, I am a cautiously spiritual person.
As part of the grieving process, I brooded about where my brother’s soul or spirit had gone after his death. He was dead. But was he gone-gone? Did any part of him remain? Could he still communicate with us?
Though improbable, there had been some suggestions that it might be possible.
What does it feel like to lose a sibling?
On Saturday, March 2, 2002, at 9:50 p.m. Pacific Time I sprawled on a futon in my apartment in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood.
My head and jaw throbbed with a deep overpowering ache that kept me in bed begging off the fun Saturday night plans I had made with friends.
At the exact moment, just before 1 a.m. on Sunday morning on the East Coast, my brother leapt from the tenth-floor roof of his apartment building in the Gramercy Park area of Manhattan.
A few hours later at 7 a.m. a knock on my door startled me.
I couldn’t understand why would someone would be at my door at 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning.
It was my former college roommate, Mari, who lived in Lower Haight.
She was uncharacteristically evasive about her motive for the unexpected, extremely early Sunday morning social call.
All she would say is that my dad would contact us soon.
My tiny blue Nokia mobile rang.
“I’m not sure how to tell you,” my dad said, without giving me a moment to break into the conversation. “We always considered you might do something like this, but we never thought your brother would.”
My brother was a jock, and I was a goth. My father was stressed, and I wasn’t exactly sure what he was trying to tell me.
